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Old Bronn has translated my book, well done also into German, and his well-known name will give it circulation. I think geologists are more converted than simple naturalists because more accustomed to reasoning.
Bronn, who translated Darwin’s works into German, was and remained loyal to the idea of a “developmental law”—that there is within the organism an innate tendency towards self-differentiation and progress, thus a purely teleological principle.
Probably most ancient dunes have been destroyed by submersion before the loose sand became cemented to solid stone, but we may suppose that circumstances have existed somewhere which have preserved the characteristics of this formation." Leonhard und Bronn, 1841, p. 8, 9. Such formations, however, certainly exist.
"After spending in this way two years in Zurich, I was attracted to Heidelberg by the great reputation of its celebrated teachers, Tiedemann, Leuckart, Bronn, and others.
It is largely admitted that numerous tertiary species have continued down into the quaternary, and many of them to the present time. A goodly percentage of the earlier and nearly half of the later tertiary mollusca, according to Des Hayes, Lye!!, and, if we mistake not, Bronn, still live. This identification, however, is now questioned by a naturalist of the very highest authority.
Now as to the organic world, it is largely admitted that numerous tertiary species have continued down into the quaternary, and many of them to the present time. A goodly percentage of the earlier and nearly half of the later tertiary mollusca, according to Des Hayes, Lyell, and, if we mistake not, Bronn, still live.
If we may trust the observations of Philippi in Sicily, the successive changes in the marine inhabitants of that island have been many and most gradual. The secondary formations are more broken; but, as Bronn has remarked, neither the appearance nor disappearance of their many now extinct species has been simultaneous in each separate formation.
It is often found coiled up like the common Oniscus or wood-louse, and this is so usual a circumstance among certain genera of trilobites as to lead us to conclude that they must have habitually resorted to this mode of protecting themselves when alarmed. Graptolithus priodon, Bronn.
From the side of Darwin's theory, on the contrary, this fact acquires meaning and significance, and it appears in return to be fitted to throw light upon a question in which Bronn saw "the first and most material objection against the new theory," namely, how it is possible that from the accumulation in various directions of the smallest variations running out of one another, varieties and species are produced, which stand out from the primary form clearly and sharply like the petiolated leaf of a Dicotyledon, and are not amalgamated with the primary form and with each other like the irregular curled lobes of a foliaceous Lichen.
If we may trust the observations of Philippi in Sicily, the successive changes in the marine inhabitants of that island have been many and most gradual. The secondary formations are more broken; but, as Bronn has remarked, neither the appearance nor disappearance of their many now extinct species has been simultaneous in each separate formation.
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